The leader of the Georgian opposition was dragged out of the party office by police

One of Georgia’s opposition leaders was dragged out of his party office by police after the prime minister said organizers of a week of pro-EU protests he called “an act of violence”. will face justice.

Nika Gvaramia, 48, the leader of one of four opposition groups, was carried by his arms and legs by police from his party headquarters down a small street next to parliament in the capital Tbilisi.

Protests have been held every night since last Thursday, after the ruling Georgian Dream party said it was pausing the country’s efforts to start negotiations on joining the EU.

More than 330 protesters have been arrested and human rights groups say many have been beaten in detention.

However, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze became increasingly harsh in his condemnation of the protesters, accusing them of spreading “liberal fascism”.

The initial protests erupted after a disputed election that monitoring groups said was marred by a series of irregularities.

But they exploded last Thursday when Kobakhidze’s increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream party said it was suspending the country’s efforts to start EU accession talks. Two days later, the US suspended Georgia’s long-awaited strategic partnership.

Georgian Dream has enacted increasingly authoritarian laws targeting civil society and LGBT groups as well as freedom of expression, and opposition parties accuse it of pushing Georgia back into the country’s sphere of influence. Russian neighbor.

“Politicians who organize violence but hide in their offices will not be able to escape responsibility for the events of the past days,” Kobakhidze said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Georgia’s Interior Ministry said more than 100 officers were injured by fireworks, rocks and other projectiles, but the country’s human rights ombudsman accused police of carrying out acts of brutality and torture against people. protest.

In the early hours of Monday, Nika Gvaramia, one of the leaders of the Alliance for Change, told the BBC that protesters had no choice but to take to the streets, because the alternative was to eliminate the country. theirs, “not just in Russia’s sphere of influence but in a kind of puppet territory”.

He also correctly predicted that his party headquarters would soon be raided by Georgian authorities.

Gvaramia’s party is not the only group targeted by the government. The offices of other parties in his Alliance for Change coalition were raided and one member arrested. The coalition came second in the controversial October 26 election.

Meanwhile, members of other opposition parties, Strong Georgia and the United National Movement, said some of their members had been taken away.

Authorities raided the home of an activist from Daitove, a large anti-government Facebook group that helps detained protesters, then moved into the home of co-founder Nancy Woland. They also targeted activists from other movements.

Gvaramia, 46, was initially taken to a detention center on the outskirts of Tbilisi, where many of the 300 detained protesters were held, and then taken to another detention center in Marneuli, in the south. south of the capital, reports said.

Former director of an opposition TV channel, Gvaramia spent 13 months in prison for abuse of power, but he was pardoned by pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili in June 2023.

Amnesty International said at the time that the charges against him were baseless and politically motivated.